


Wrinkles, Clothes and Skin

by odoridango



Series: Tell It Like It Is [3]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship, Snarky Eren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:33:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1965630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odoridango/pseuds/odoridango
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin talks a lot about youth. Eren thinks he's full of bullshit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrinkles, Clothes and Skin

The Commander is tall and broad but Eren is not bothered by his size. When he sits he does not seem nearly as large or intimidating, and even despite his misgivings, the Commander has never intimidated him physically or used his size against others in any way, so perfectly in control of his body language as he is. Is that what adulthood means? Control, being big, being large, dwarfing all the people in the room with a look, with a word? At that rate, Eren may as well be fifteen forever.

Even so, Eren receives no tutelage, no favors, no promotions, no compensation from the older man, receives nothing but moments of the Commander’s time here and there, always wondering why Erwin is there with him, what his agenda is for the day. Cleaning, eating, cooking, or taking care of the horses, the Commander has a habit of cornering Eren for a couple minutes each day for a short chat. It’s not without reason—in some ways the Commander is a bit like Armin, calculated, meditative, but with a harsher edge, a ruthlessness and forcefulness that is without his best friend’s gentle touch and consideration.

“You’re young,” Erwin says, over and over, in different permutations. Eren, in a strange turn of events, keeps his mouth shut and his brow furrowed. He doesn’t see how youth has anything to do with it, with understanding, with caring, any of it. Maybe Erwin Smith is a little quirky that way, like how Captain Levi sometimes stops in the middle of cleaning to stare at his clenched hands, or how Mikasa has a new habit of stroking the scar on her cheek when she’s worried and lost in thought. War steals and takes things away, though Eren sometimes wonders how much of a war this truly is. Survival is more like it, on the days when he’s honest with himself, on the days when he looks at himself in the mirror and settles with being a monster, feels good, feels fine with that level of inhumanity in him. Not superhuman, but extrahuman. Humanity with just a little bit _more_ , like how he’s always been just a little angrier, just a little more righteous. Just like that. A little bit more than human.

Of course, it’s on bad days when he forgets all of that, just feels the tension roil under his skin, dig into his bones, and he looks over to the Commander who looks at him with that impenetrable stare, that blank smile, and he wants to ask, wants to demand what it is this bastard thinks he’s banking on, what sort of plans and ideas does he have for him? What sort of unpleasant surprises? Because for all their talking, Erwin Smith is not a man of sentiment, and Eren’s been thrown under the wheels long enough to know there’s more where that came from.

“You always say I’m young.”

“The young should be protected.”

Inscrutable as always. That doesn’t tell Eren jack shit. Should, would, could.

Eren gives him a bit of the old petulant stink-eye—if it’s youth the Commander wants, its youth he’ll get.

“Do you really think that?”

Youth, as in innocence, and the losing of it? Blissful ignorance? Maybe the Commander’s having a midlife crisis and that’s why he keeps hanging around Eren. Eren has nothing to offer him except for his titan shifter status, and he’s had ample commentary from others on his emotional transparency.

“No,” Erwin says, surprisingly, and he doesn’t smile, just has this wry turn to his lips.

“I thought so,” Eren says, “You don’t protect me.”

“There’s the Special Operations Squad.”

“They guard and watch _Eren Jaeger_. They don’t protect _me_.”

Rain water, dripping down the eaves. Drip drip drip, the hollow sound of waterdrops falling into the bucket of water set aside for the horses. A comfortable, if stiff silence, strangely relaxed, Eren lies buried in a massive loose hay bale in an empty stable stall, Erwin sitting nearby, hunched on an overturned feed bucket. Eren can feel Erwin’s stare digging into the side of his head.

“Do you want to be protected, Eren?”

A mother’s hugs, kisses pressed on his cheek. Mikasa’s overbearing concerns and the red of her scarf, and the tales that Armin taught him that help lure him to sleep in the dark.

“It’s not protection that I want.”

Not Captain Levi in front of him, defending him, nor the Commander behind him with his broad back, imprisoning, imposing, protecting through imprisonment and trapping. He wants the security of a blade on his neck, of the hands that readily catch him when he falls, the support of a warm smile or a hand through his hair, fingers smoothing across his brow.

He looks at Erwin’s (the Commander’s) large, calloused hands, and wants to hold them. Somehow, Eren finds him sad. When Eren looks up again, he finds that the Commander is already looking back, his gaze poised and ready, trained on Eren before he knows it.

“It’s not what you want either, is it?” Eren asks, and his whisper is loud in the sound of falling rain, louder than the sound of his heartbeat when Erwin reaches over with one of those hands and ever so gently, cautiously, brushes the hair away from his face. They don’t touch, but Eren can feel the heat, the warmth that emanates from the Commander’s skin, the dry fire that eats him inside, burns him hollow. There are infinitely worse hearths to warm oneself by.

**Author's Note:**

> For eruren week, Day 3: protection.


End file.
